Heritage Sports is one of the rare U.S.-friendly gambling sites that we’re happy to review. They have two characteristics that will always be welcome in any betting market (especially the U.S. market with its lack of high quality operators): reliability and cheap betting lines.
The Costa Rica-based company has operated on an invite-only business model for a large part of their history and only started accepting customers from all over the world a few years ago. In 2011, Heritage expanded by acquiring the US-based customer bases of The Greek Sports and BetJamaica, both of which had top-class reputations within the gambling industry.
Not only has Heritage accumulated a strong reputation throughout its 20+ years in the business, they’re one of the rare online bookmakers offering reduced juice bets (-108 or -105 instead of -110). 5Dimes is practically the only other well-known operator in the U.S. market with reduced juice bets.
Are There Any Complaints?
It’s been difficult to find anything negative to say about them.
In 2002, Heritage Sports lowered betting limits for some of its most skilled customers which, understandably, caused a minor outcry among those customers. This is common behavior in today’s betting world – for example, Bovada.lv (one of our top-ranked U.S. betting sites), is notorious for not only decreasing betting limits to $1 for skilled bettors but also showing different odds for different players based on their skill levels.
Throughout 2002 when Heritage Sports lowered betting limits for a part of its customer base, there were no reports of slow payouts or any other type of rogue behavior. Heritage has the right to decide the size of the bets it’s willing to accept. I understand why their skilled customers were upset (they constantly found good odds at Heritage and now they suddenly were unable to bet big money on them) but Heritage had the right to do what they did.
Signing-Up
The sign-up process is unlike any other that I’ve ran across in recent years. You submit your account details through their website, which is normal, but after clicking ”Submit” you get a pop-up telling you to call their phone number with your reference number to complete the sign-up process. Signing-up at this site takes a little more work than what many of us have gotten used to.
Promotions
During the sign-up process, you have to choose between two promotions:
- Reduced Juice (-108) + Cashback: You can choose to get -108 odds on all basketball and football full-game sides. Additionally, you’ll get an 8% bonus on $100+ deposits (with a 4x rollover requirement), cashback (0.4-0.8% depending on how many bets you place within a quarter) when betting on NFL, NBA and NCAA full-game sides and totals and full-game baseball totals (excluding live betting), and $300+ deposits free of charge, among other things.
- Reduced Juice (-105): You won’t get any of the bonus promotions mentioned above, but you will get cheaper betting lines. This is often the better option for bettors who are both serious and active.
From what I understand, choosing one promotion or another is not permanent, and can be changed after you’ve been an active customer for a while.
Deposits and Withdrawals
You can fund your Heritage Sports account with options such as credit and prepaid cards, money transfer services (Western Union and Moneygram), bitcoin and even checks and bank wires (only reserved for bigger deposits). Here are all the available Heritage Sports deposit options along with deposit limits, clearance times and fees:
Heritage Sports takes care of all the deposit fees when you deposit $300 or more. Additionally, they acknowledge that their U.S. customers may find it hard to successfully deposit money to their site each time they attempt doing so (card deposits especially fail to clear sometimes) so if your deposit falls through seven times in a row, they’ll cover the costs of the eighth deposit.
Heritage allows one free withdrawal per 30 days, suggesting you initiate the withdrawal more than seven days after making a deposit. Here are all the withdrawal options available at Heritage Sports:
Sportsbook
So how’s the actual sportsbook?
As mentioned, Heritage Sports has great betting lines – sometimes the absolute best in the U.S. market. As an example, Heritage offered the best odds for almost every player for Super Bowl 50’s MVP betting when compared to our other top-rated U.S. sites (5Dimes, BetOnline, Bookmaker and Bovada). Heritage can hold its own and often even beat its U.S. competitors.
Heritage offers fewer betting markets than Bovada and 5Dimes and the available markets are concentrated around American sports (that’s a given since their customer base is mainly from America). Therefore you’ll find every betting market you’d expect from US-friendly sportsbooks (baseball, basketball, football, MMA, tennis, golf, racing, hockey, boxing, volleyball, cycling and darts).
I wish they improved the usability of the sportsbook from the current ”check and submit” type of an interface to one that works with real-time filters (much better from a usability perspective). 5Dimes – the other U.S. sportsbook with reduced juice bets – has a similar system and I can only hope they’ll both make some changes in near future.
Considering Heritage offers less betting markets than its biggest U.S. competitors, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how many betting propositions their live betting interface has. Bovada is the only site with more live betting propositions but I assume that Heritage has the better odds most of the time, which is more important anyway.
Heritage has a mobile betting interface that you can play from within your browser (no apps to download) and it works on all mobile devices and operating systems.
Finally, Heritage Sports’ betting limits are mid-tier within the U.S. market, although these can usually be negotiated at just about any online sportsbook.
Casino
The casino games at Heritage Sports are provided by Betsoft Gaming Ltd. Betsoft is a well-respected software provider but I don’t consider them one of the best in the business. Furthermore, many online casinos use games provided by several companies, so the game selection at Heritage Casino is slim compared to those. I wouldn’t sign-up for the casino experience.
Poker
You can also play poker at Heritage Sports. Their online poker room is a part of the Equity Poker Network, which ranks around top-40 among world’s top online poker rooms traffic-wise (in other words, not good at all). If you’re exclusively a poker player, BetOnline Poker and Bookmaker Poker are far better options due to having multiple times more traffic.
Conclusion
Heritage Sports’ strong reputation is a rare occurrence in the USA online betting market. They have some of the best betting lines for American sports. That’s all you need: great betting lines and a strong reputation. However, I wouldn’t sign-up for their casino or poker games, which are far from the best options in the U.S. market.